Camila Cabello on Her Boyfriend: 'I Love Working With Him So Much'

Camila Cabello is one of the many artists featured on the cover on Elle’s “Women in Music” October Issue but she’s probably the only one to discuss a fake celebrity relationship within its pages. I feel empowered already.

I thought the “women in ____” construction was passé, and then I read a bunch of quotes about Cabello adoring Shawn Mendes for qualities that exist beyond his silky voice and bone structure. But mostly, she talks about love. Cannot forget about love.

“Honestly, this past year and a half was the first time I really experienced falling in love with another person. I think there is so much more depth to love when you know you are in it with another person. You have so much more to say—I think that’s what makes me emotional,” Cabello told Elle. “Love is the most sacred, precious thing to me. I want to always feel like my love is between me and that person, and never belonging to anyone else. As much as I love my fans, and as much as I love people, I like to live my life as normally as possible. In a relationship, it makes me feel uncomfortable to invite everyone in on that.”

The interviewer then addresses the “rumors with Shawn Mendes,” which Cabello answers by saying everything just short of “fuck y’all, I do what I want”:

“I don’t know; people can say whatever they want to say. They can speculate, but at the same time, we are going to live our own lives, enjoy it, and fall for each other like nobody is watching. That is how I want to live. I never want to open the door for people to feel like they are involved. Like I said, I want it to be mine and [his]. That’s why I’m so tight-lipped about it: because I want to protect it.”

I speculate that it is fake. She continues to discuss their working relationship, emphasis my own:

“I mean, I love him. We have always connected; we have the best time together. Shawn texted me the idea for the chorus for “Señorita.” He was like, “Hey, what if we work on this and do it together?” I was on the Taylor Swift tour and hadn’t been in the studio for a while. I didn’t want to do it, and then a few months later, I couldn’t get the song out of my head. I [ finally] told him, “I think we should do this.” He was like, “I don’t want to do it anymore.” It went back and forth for, like, eight months. Then we finally went into the studio and reworked it so we both felt good about it, without any pressure. I love working with him so much.”

It’s true, whenever I look longingly into my boyfriend’s eyes, the first thing I say to him is, “I love working with you so much.” That’s romance.